Abstract:
Hill dipterocarp forest areas in Peninsular Malaysia are inherently poor within the natural
regeneration. Enrichment planting scheme was implemented with the main objective of
expediting the restructuring of the forest content to a desired level in terms of marketable and
high quality economic species composition. Effective rehabilitation action plan for degraded
logged-over forests such as enrichment planting has been developed to ensure that stocking of
commercial trees in the next harvest is sufficient to sustain the supply of logs for the domestic and
international market requirements. Besides that the implementation also aimed to support the
reforestation of forest abandon areas during the post-harvesting period. The implementation was
also considered as an integral part of the silvicultural system. At the high cost in establishment of
the enrichment planting, it compensated the economic return with a greater yield of commercial
and variable economically timber species. The absence of adverse growing seasons and high
growth rate of dipterocarp trees with valuable and quality commercial timber species further
accentuates the economic necessity for enrichment planting. The objectives of this paper were to
discuss the development and characteristics of enrichment planting in Peninsular Malaysia.
With regard to the sustainable forest management practices, key constraints and future
prospects of the enrichment planting in Peninsular Malaysia will also be assessed.
